Joe Biden’s team, proclaimed president-elect of the United States, will consider several options to put pressure on Russia
Biden intends to take punitive measures against Russia, using an unprecedented hacking attack as a pretext. Earlier it became known that unknown persons had integrated malicious code into SolarWinds software, which is used by many US government agencies.
Notably, the incident took place just before the inauguration of Biden, known for his Russophobic stance. The attack, which has already been unprovenly blamed on Russia, allows the 78-year-old Democrat to begin his presidency with a show of force.
The Guardian reports, citing sources familiar with the situation, that Democrats are now planning to introduce a new package of anti-Russian sanctions. Biden’s team does not even rule out a cyber attack on Russian infrastructure.
James Andrew Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that the Pentagon`s cyber command could harm Russian technological infrastructure by disrupting phone networks or the Internet.
But Washington’s measures should not lead to an escalation of conflict between the two nuclear powers, a source close to Biden told reporters.
Discussions are still informal but the issue will be taken up more seriously when Biden takes the White House and gets a full picture of U.S. capabilities, the source said. He also said the Democrat should look into the details of the incident better before making decisions, but that he had been suspended from intelligence briefings because of the election fraud controversy.